The line "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt" came from a letter written by Travis' brother John.[1] Another line came from their father, a coal miner, who would say: "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store."[4]

Contents

Authorship

The sole authorship of "Sixteen Tons" is attributed to Merle Travis on all recordings[5] beginning with Travis' own 1946 record and is registered with BMI as a Merle Travis composition. George S. Davis, a folk singer and songwriter who had been a Kentucky coal miner, claimed on a 1966 recording for Folkways Records to have written the song as "Nine-to-ten tons" in the 1930s;[7] he also at different times claimed to have written the song as "Twenty-One Tons". There is no supporting evidence for Davis' claim.[8] Davis' 1966 recording of his version of the song (with some slightly different lyrics and tune, but titled "Sixteen Tons") appears on the albums George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Union Men[9] and Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian.[10]

According to Travis, the line "another day older and deeper in debt" from the chorus was a phrase often used by his father, a coal miner himself.[11] This and the line "I owe my soul to the company store" are a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this scrip system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers that could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay. In the United States the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly formed United Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices.

Laine's version was not released in the United States but sold well in the UK. Ford's version was released on 17 October and by 28 October had sold 400,000 copies. On 10 November, a million copies had been sold; two million were sold by 15 December.[15]

1987: Frank Tovey performed the song on his album Tyranny & the Hired Hand.

1990: A rendition of the song by Eric Burdon was used for the opening to the comedy film Joe Versus the Volcano. Recorded in the early 1980s, it was not released until 1998 on the album Nightwinds Dying. In 1992 he recorded another version, which was released as the only studio track on the live album Access All Areas in 1993.

1991: It was featured as a secret track on progressive thrash metal band Confessor's album Condemned.

Foreign-language versions

Armand Mestral released a version with French lyrics under the title "Seize Tonnes" in 1956.

A German version of the song did not translate the original lyrics, but rather rewrote them entirely, under the title "Sie heiß Mary-Ann". This was released in several versions on German record labels in 1956 and 1957, most notably by Ralf Bendix, and Freddy Quinn on his album "Freddy" recorded on Polydor.

Spanish version "16 Toneladas" was recorded by the Catalan singer José Guardiola and became a hit in Spain and Latin America in 1960.[27]

Italian version recorded by I Giganti, on the B-side of a 45 RPM vinyl record in 1968.

Brazilian composer Roberto Neves wrote the Portuguese version "Dezesseis Toneladas", first recorded by Noriel Vilela in 1971.[28][29]

A version called "靜心等" (Jìng Xin Deng, "Wait patiently") is a well-known hit in Taiwan, interpreted by Chinese singer 張露 (Chang Loo or Zhang Lu) and by Teresa Teng (鄧麗君, Deng Lijun).

Hungarian punk band Hétköznapi Csalódások recorded a cover version in 1994 called "16 000 kg=1 600 000dkg" on their album Nyaljátok ki (Kiss my).

Hungarian rock band Republic recorded a cover version in 1998 called "Tizenhat tonna feketeszén" ("16 tons black coal") on their album Üzenet (Message).[30][31] Republic's lyrics uses lines from a Hungarian campfire song, a more literal translation of the original ballad.[32]

A slow, jazzy version by Finnish Turo's Hevi Gee appeared on the 1999 album Ei se mitn! as "Velkavankilaulu".

Serbian hard rock band Riblja Čorba recorded a cover version in 1999 called "16 noći" ("16 nights") on their album Nojeva barka.

July 2013, in Ukraine, the song was recorded[33] by ukrabilly (Ukrainian folk) group "Ot Vinta!".[34]

A Mexican group Hermanos Barron from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico recorded the song in the 1980s as "16 Toneladas".[35]

A Swedish version ("Sexton ton") was recorded 1956 by Cacka Israelsson and released as a B-side on the single "Tro och Kärlek". It was adapted into Swedish by Ingrid Reuterskiöld.

Another Swedish version ("Sexton ton") was recorded in 1970 by Gunnar Wiklund. The song is about a truckdriver who drives 16 tons of wooden crates over the border.

Alex To version in his 2014 concert. He sang both the original version and his mom's (Chang Loo) version.[36]

In popular culture

"42 Kids", a song with the same music as "Sixteen Tons", talking about public-school problems, was submitted to Sing Out! magazine in 1960s by Earl Robinson and later covered by Pete Seeger. It contained the lyrics "St. Peter, don't you call me to that heavenly gate, I owe my soul to the youth of the state."

John Denver performed his golf-themed parody called "18 Holes" in 1997.[37]

Mickey Katz recorded a parody entitled "Sixteen Tons" on his album Greatest Shticks in the 1950s.[38]

In Russia, the Moscow concert venue Sixteen Tons[39] is named after the song, which is played before each concert held in the club.

General Electric used Tennessee Williams' rendition of the song in an advertisement promoting clean coal in 2005. A number of commentators and humorists noted the irony of using a song lamenting the misfortune of working as a coal miner in an advertisement promoting coal mining.[40][41][42]